Saturday, March 31, 2007

Springtime Spirit

It's the time of the year where everyone is feeling the Spring. I cleaned my apartment the other day, and wondered why my place looked different than they did in the winter. And then I remembered that there wasn't any plastic on the windows anymore, and the sun is shining in from another angle, and there aren't small salt mines forming in my front doorway from winter boots. The daffodils have bloomed in what seems like two days since they popped their bulbular heads out of the ground, and the magnolia trees are flowering, ready to get it on with those other randy mag's. Springtime squirrels get chatty and try to remember where they hid their nuts. If I lived in Florida, I'm sure that even the alligators would feel the April urges- maybe they'd even want to bake a pie with me.
All this Springtime excitement makes me want to eat lots of chocolate. Perhaps slightly less chocolate than when I was 8, when I ate an entire foot-tall chocolate Easter Bunny and then threw it all up behind a sofa (cue embarrassed child), but a lot of chocolate nonetheless. I think I might go eat some chocolate right now. And you know what would go perfect with some bittersweet morsels? Some cashews. If only I could remember where I buried those nuts.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Double Decker Airplanes

A huge double-decker airplane with wings as wide as a football field has just passed its ocean-crossing test and it is now ready to enter the big kid's club. And by big kid's club, I mean fly 500 people across the Pacific and have the honor of being the biggest plane in the world. Can they get any bigger? The shadow of that plane could cover an entire town! Think of all the first-class leg room I could have with my gazillionaire friends, as we lounge on the upper deck with our appletinis. On second thought...maybe it's not so great to ride in huge fancy planes. I'd hate to be the poor guy who got stuck next to the elderly lady that died while on flight, and the stewardesses had to prop her up with a bunch of pillows during turbulence. One can't really tell the dead to stop hogging your armrest.
It's too bad we have so waste so much effort on planes because we can't use the world's natural transporter, blue whales. I can see the promo spots now: "Whales! The All-Natural Vehicle- Made of blubber!" as we hop on the barnacled backs of these lovelies. It would also be pretty great to meet your loved ones on the dock (or in the air, if they could fly, like in Fantasia 2000) as the whale surfaced- aunt Paula or uncle Tony could pop out of the baleen mouth, ready for a walk around Manhattan. In reality, whales cannot hold us elegantly in their mouths, nor could we endure the boredom of terribly slow swimming rates. And meanwhile, instead of floating through the sky effortlessly on my way to Paris, I'd probably get stuck a runway in Biloxi with a dead lady propped up on my shoulder, and the only thing on my tiny slum-class TV is continuous episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond (Except for Midnight). It's time to reach for the flight attendant button. Maybe they can make me an appletini.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Earl Smitty, III, Personal Savior to the Stars

I was thinking about making a business card that read something like 'Midnight Shoveler- Occupation: ?', but I thought that might be a waste of paper. Luckily I also drafted this baby as a template in case I ever want to come back to it. Luckier still I've never been handed a business card like this, in which case I might tear it into tiny pieces and use it as confetti at my next apartment-discothèque.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Newborn Baby, Here's Your MySpace Profile

I have recently discovered that there is a vast community of new mothers who have put their baby's sonogram and pregnancy test picture on the internet as the main photo of their MySpace profile. I'm sure there are more gross examples out there than a picture of your pregnancy test (I've already heard one but risk becoming ill writing it) but this makes me ponder the future of childbirth and newborn-ness in general. Imagine, if you will, a mother naming her baby Dot Com for the promotional benefits, or the entire expenses of a baby's birth being provided by 'baby' companies with a promise that the kid's life will be a walking advertisement for certain products. Oh, wait. Those things have already happened. My mistake.
But imagine a near-reality in the future, when parents create MySpace profiles for their newborn children, and the kid's profile picture is an intra-uterine photo (a la National Geographic) of the developing foetus inside of your womb. None of that low-tech sonogram profile photo for the surrogate mother of my child, no ma'am. Technology will evolve so that women can place tiny cameras inside them for quick pics. I want the real high-resolution shots, so all my child's foetus-friendsters can get jealous of how cute my kid is, complete with a candid photo of a thumbs-up from inside the amniotic sac. Think of Leonardo da Vinci's babies (pictured right) watching tiny Uterine TVs that let a baby know how best to slide right out without causing mom any pain! (Or perhaps just watching SpongeBob.) And I will list my child's interests as 'Nutrition from the umbilical cord', 'listening to Stravinsky on womb-headphones', and 'general kicking and causing a ruckus'.
These days are fast approaching, and I'm bummed that 1. it's too bad I don't really like babies, and 2. I'll probably just adopt a two-year-old from Tibet anyway, sparing me all the nonsense of getting that camera up into unfamiliar territory.


P.S. Posts have been scant lately due to my lack of internets in my apartment, but fear not. I can always blog at work.